There are many doctors planning to come to Canada as skilled immigrants. According to CIC Canada website, thousands of General practitioners and Specialist Physicians will come to Canada this year with dreams. In Canada they will need to obtain license if they want to practice medicine. They will need to do a residency training to retrain them. A cardiologist, who he has been practicing cardiology in his country for many years, he will need to complete at least 5 years of residency training in internal medicine and cardiology to be eligible to practice cardiology in Canada. This is also true for other specialists.

After a doctor comes to Canada and wants to practice medicine, all his previous experience and training will be ignored and there will be no difference between a GP, a Cardiologist or an obstetrician. They will all have to start like a new graduate from a medical school. They will all need residency training for at least 2-5 years to obtain a license. To become eligible for residency training they will have to qualify in several examinations.

According to residency training website (CARMS) (http://www.carms.ca/eng/index.shtml) most of the doctors will need to pass in MCCEE, MCCQE1, and NAC-OSCE examinations. On the other hand, a medical graduate from a Canadian medical school will not need to qualify in MCCEE and NAC OSCE examination to be eligible for a residency position. Many of the foreign trained doctors will need to qualify in other examinations, in addition to the three examinations, which may include: MCCQE2, CE1 CE2 etc.

Last year approximately 2000 foreign trained doctors applied for residency positions. They were able to apply for the residency positions only after they got pass standing in the required examinations. Among them approximately 350 doctors got their desired residency positions.

Every year around 2000 Canadian graduates come out of their medical schools. They have got exactly same number of residency positions for them. But there are only approximately 350 residency positions available for the doctors who did not graduate from Canadian medical schools.

So, every year a large number of doctors who did not graduate from Canadian medical schools and who are mainly immigrants are left out of the main system, because there are not enough residency positions for them. There is also evidence of systematic injustice reported by some organizations.

At present there are more than 7000 foreign trained doctors residing only in Ontario http://aipso.webs.com/. The total number in Canada will exceed 10,000.

Every year, according to CIC website, more than 2000 doctors (GPs and Specialists) are expected to come to Canada as federal immigrants. There are also doctors coming to Canada as provincial nominees and there are also other immigration programs bringing doctors to Canada. If we consider the existing system and its capacity, only a small number of these doctors (not more than 5-6%) will be able to enter into the system after crossing all the barriers. The question is what will happen to the rest. What will happen to those who are taking all the trouble to come to this country believing that they will be able to serve the people of Canada and help to fill up the shortage of doctors?